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Over on court 10, two best friends from the Bollettieri IMG Academy duked it out for nearly two and a half hours for the girl's 12 singles title. Tara Moore of Great Britain came out on top against Tamaryn Hendler of Belgium, 3-6; 6-3; 6-3. Only hours before they were seen chasing each other around the complex, Tamaryn on a bike and Tara on a scooter, seemingly unconcerned about the big occasion ahead of them.

Afterwards both girls came to the interview, smiling and chatting happily about the match. Looking at their faces, you would never know who is the winner. "You have to put friendship aside, because it's still only a match and afterwards you are still friends," said Tara. Tamaryn nodded in agreement, and said, "It was hard, I mean, I didn't really think about it otherwise it would have affected me."

Locked in an even match at one set each and 3-games-all in the third set, the British player, whose father is from England and mother is from Hong Kong, stepped up her game and started to play more aggressively. "I decided I had nothing to lose," said Tara. "She was playing so well the first set, I just went for broke." Tara held serve at love, giving herself a monumental edge at this point in the match. She then broke, at 30-all in the next game, with two forehand winners for 5-3. Serving for the match, at 30-all, a couple of unforced errors off the Belgian's racquet closed it out. "I started playing more defensive and she took advantage of it," Tamaryn explained.

Nick Bollettieri, who has been seen all week enjoying the matches, said to the crowd after the match, "Twenty five years ago this would have been considered the 18s final." He also paid tribute to their coach, Percy Melzi who has done wonders for the girls' game for the past two years.

"I wanted to win this match for my Aunt Yvonne and a past friend, Scott Fu, my agent who helped me come here, who died of cancer, so I really want to dedicate this to him," said Tara, before leaving with Tamaryn.

There's an interview with Tamaryn Hendler in this month's Play Tennis!

"Tammy" is twelve years old, has in fact never lived in Belgium and grew up in South-Africa!
Her father is South-African, her mother is Congolese-Belgian!
She has a brother Ricky (8), who plays golf, and a sister Skyler (2), who's already being taught the basics of tennis
She's 1.59m and weighs 50kg.

She might play the Belgian Championships (Borman) but she's not sure yet as the tickets to fly to Belgium are quite expensive and she might not find a sponsor in time